I run in some impressive circles of high achievers. I published a book with a Big Five publisher. People ask for my opinion on important issues. I’ve had bylines in serious publications whose names I’ve known my whole life. I get paid six figures to ask questions and tell people what I think, basically. I’ve managed other people at work.
All this is to say: I should be very proud and very impressed with myself. As a girl from a rural, working-class Wisconsin town, I’m punching way above my weight.
But I’m constantly questioning my right to be in this position and hoping no one looks too closely at my greatest blemish: I don’t have a college degree.
None. Nadda. Zippo.
Every time I log into LinkedIn and see the prompt to “finish filling out your education details,” I want to scream at the screen, “I have! That’s it, that’s all I’ve got to say about that!”
Every time I have to check that box on some survey: What’s the highest level of education you’ve completed? It’s “high school.” Sometimes I have the option to say “some college.”
Every time you read a report about how “uneducated white people” impact our politics? That’s my demo.
I don’t think “uneducated” is a fair way to describe me (especially if you’re going to be so rude about it). Even “non-college-educated” is inaccurate; I attended the most prestigious public university in my state for nearly four years and learned a ton while I was there. I’ve since developed a strong expertise — enough to write that book, get those bylines, earn that money.
I just happen to be degree-less.
I’m an auto-didact. Depending on who you talk to, that might be highly respected or highly suspect. My feelings about it change from week to week.
Punching above my class as I do, I’m surrounded by people who didn’t just graduate from college. They have master’s degrees and PhDs. Many from prestigious private and Ivy League schools, or respected places like the Walter Cronkite School of Journalism and the Wharton School of Business. And they were straight-A students and high school valedictorians who entered college with a pile of AP credits.
I got a D in AP History and dropped out of AP Calculus after barely getting a C- with extra tutoring from the teacher in the first semester. (I did wear an “honor cord” at graduation for having over a 3.0 GPA, but I was also late to the ceremony.)
I was waitlisted at the University of Wisconsin and let in at the last minute. I think my GPA over my years there was two-point-something.
I don’t take to formal education. That’s not surprising to me now that I know I’m autistic; I’ve heard the same from countless other neurodivergent auto-didacts. But I didn’t know that when I was in high school and college. I sailed through elementary and middle school with all this “potential,” but I hit a wall once I had opportunities to take classes that actually challenged that potential.
I loved what I learned in AP U.S. History, but on test day, all I could remember were subjects’ first names and some cool things they did. Or maybe the name of their wives who were mentioned once. That wasn’t enough to pass a test that asked for details and dates. (Wish we’d have had Hamilton then, because I’m a GD whiz in U.S. history now!) I did great with algebra, because it’s basically math grammar, and I’m obsessed with language; but calculus was all formulas that required a special calculator that had no place in the real world, and I couldn’t wrap my head around it. Even my English classes were tough to get through, because everything we read was at least a century old and the daily reading load was more than I could keep up with. As much as I loved writing, I hated writing analysis essays of those terrible old novels I couldn’t read.
A teacher once asked us to write an essay about what Machiavelli meant by “the ends justify the means,” and I hadn’t read a word of The Prince.1 I wrote 500 words about how the meaning of life is revealed just before its end, and the teacher found it so beautifully written yet profoundly wrong that he was compelled to read it in front of the whole class. (They rallied to make him raise my grade on the assignment, so it was kind of a shining moment despite the humiliation.)
I assumed I’d make it through college, because that was the next step and I’d made it through the rest so far. Maybe I’d have earned a degree if I’d stayed at the diverse community college I’d adored for a year. But the standards I faced at the University of Wisconsin were too high to skate by on a moving-but-incorrect interpretation of Machiavelli. And the work of it didn’t always jibe with me. Consistently showing up to class regardless of wildly inconsistent energy. Participation points that expected me to form thoughts immediately and to speak up in front of the entire class. Group projects. Multiple-choice exams. Five-paragraph essays.
I loved the lectures. I loved earning credit for internships and community service. And I had one amazing Community Journalism class where we interviewed real people in the city and wrote blog posts. That one changed my life — I dropped out after that semester to go work as a writer.
That was 16 years ago, and I have, in fact, been working professionally as a writer ever since. I could have stayed and tried to earn a journalism degree first, but, honestly, I’d probably still be there.
Over four years in college, I bounced from major to major trying to find something that fit and never pieced together a real speciality. Five years into being a writer, I found personal finance, and over the next four years, I finally developed the expertise I could never hone through formal education.
In 2021, after six years of writing about money, I did get certified as a financial educator, so now I have a credential to prove my expertise. But everything I needed to know to pass that test I learned through my work as a writer, not through the required course.
While my agent and I were writing my book proposal, he took to calling my experience as a personal finance journalist a “masterclass” in personal finance, and nothing could be more perfect. That’s exactly what my work has been. As a service journalist, it’s been my job to distill information for readers. That forced me to learn and understand a ton of topics I’d otherwise know nothing about. I’ve interviewed financial planners, mortgage brokers, debt negotiators, lenders, fintech founders and, once, a local plumber who told me whether you could save money by peeing in the shower (tl;dr: maybe, not much). I’ve read bankruptcy laws, lending agreements and the fine print on bank accounts. Then I write everything down with the goal of answering specific reader questions.
If only all of my education had been structured this way.
I was an artistic girl with her head in the clouds, and I ended up becoming an expert in finance. Of all things. Because I got to learn about this topic in the ways that worked for me.
I know I’m not stupid. Despite how I show up in statistics, I don’t believe I’m uneducated, either. But sometimes, I do wonder whether all the ways I’ve failed in life are tied to never earning that degree. I see anecdotally and statistically the ways people with college degrees are better off, and I think, Yep. You should have just tried harder.
Would I have learned to be more disciplined if I’d persevered through a degree program?
Would I be a better researcher if I’d gone to grad school?
Would I have more opportunities if I could tap into an alumni network?
Would I get more job interviews or make more money if my resume listed a degree?
Would I know more if I’d figured out how to pass tests?
Would I, in fact, be smarter if I had just been able to stick it out through school?
The people around me are all so smart, and that’s such a privilege. I’m usually the dumbest person in the room. Sometimes I treasure that distinction, because it means I’ve somehow gotten somewhere no one expected me to belong. And that I get to learn from incredible people. But it’s a lonely status.
It’s not like anyone is asking about my degree in normal conversations. I didn’t have to present a resume to get a book deal. My decade in personal finance media is much more important to my career now than a degree I might have gotten 16 years ago. Probably no one is thinking about my college education day to day. I think people generally assume I’ve got a degree, actually.
But it crops up for me in subtle ways that feed my insecurity.
When someone mentions how many books they read on their week-long vacation, I wonder if they learned to digest information that quickly in grad school. When I can’t recall a name or year or location from history, I wonder if it’s because I didn’t study enough. When I see someone rising through a career I’d love to have, I wonder if they landed just the right job out of college after a prestigious internship.
I can never know the difference a college degree might have had on my trajectory. Realistically, I’m guessing it wouldn’t be much. The successes and failures I’ve experienced all track with the way my brain works and the things that interest me; powering through a degree program wasn’t going to change any of that.
But it’ll always be a little tough to resist comparing myself to all the smarter people in the room.
Your turn!
How does education fit into your life today? What does your history with education mean to you? Most importantly, please let me know: Do you think I’m stupid because I don’t have a college degree??
In which Machiavelli wrote those words, for my fellow uneducateds.